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Indonesia Offers Increased Assistance To Samoa And Pacific

Director for Technical Cooperation for Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the active role was part of his country's effort to contribute to world peace and prosperity

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (Radio New Zealand International, September 18, 2017) – Samoa and other Pacific countries are being offered increased technical assistance and capacity building programmes by Indonesia.

TheObserver reported that Indonesia restated its commitment to playing an active role in regional development during the recent Pacific Islands Forum summit in Apia.

The Director for Technical Cooperation for Indonesia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Syarif Alatas, said the active role was part of his country's effort to contribute to world peace and prosperity.

He said renewed technical assistance was being made available to Samoa, which recently entered a trade relationship with Indonesia.

Mr Alatas said the assistance is usually in the form of training, apprenticeships and scholarships in various fields.

According to him, Pacific countries have become one of then priority areas for Jakarta's international development outreach.

The various capacity building programmes Indonesia offered come in the form of bilateral and triangular cooperation arrangements.

The newspaper reported that between 1999 and 2016 Indonesia conducted at least 182 programmes followed by 1457 participants from countries in the Pacific region.

The programmes were in areas including fisheries, agriculture, democracy and good governance, disaster risk management, seaweed processing technique and entrepreneurship.

Pacific Islands Report is a nonprofit news publication of the Pacific Islands Development Program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawai‘i. Offered as a free service to readers, PIR provides an edited digest of news, commentary and analysis from across the Pacific Islands region, Monday - Friday.